Dr. Schalk is a cofounder and Chief Operations Officer at Enzyme by Design and Research Assistant Professor at University of Illinois at Chicago. She completed her BS in Biochemistry at Eastern Michigan University and her Master’s and PhD at the International Max Planck Research School for Molecular Biology in Goettingen, Germany. Her postdoc Dr. Lavie’s lab at the UIC was developing protein anti-cancer therapeutics. She worked 2 years as a virtual lab manager with small biotechs across the country. In 2017, her team from UIC spun out their safer cancer therapeutics technology into the startup Enzyme by Design.